80 - Math vs Geography Bloody Redux

I sat back down on the banister as Father waved at me, indicating I should. “So what did you have in mind, my miniature?”

“I... had not yet decided, Ilustrious Sire. Last time... last time, I had the two boys fight in the Faibalitz bowl. Bloody noses and broken arms. One was designated Mathematics and the other... another subject, I forget. The one that won... I would study that day.”


He laughed at the idea. “Good. Excellent idea. So, now you are planning something similar?” He nodded at the books on torture and pain in the servant’s hands now.


“Something like that Divine Father.”


He clapped his hands together, just as the Mahid four I’d sent out came back with the two young men. “So... which shall be which? Entertain me, my son!”


I took a deep breath and reached for the muck inside my soul. They were entirely in my control. Their lives were mine and I should take the fear in their faces and bodies as they flung themselves on the floor below when they realized that not only was I there, but Father was too.


“Mahid,” I called down to them. “Get each one a sword... and a chain.” The two men... they looked to be brothers... were okas. They would be like an untrained novelty act in the Mezem. Father clapped his hands.


“Oh, yes! Gehit! Gehit! Both of you!” Father leaned forward, elbows propped on the same banister I sat on. “I am very pleased with my heir and I give you to him as a gift.”

He expects me to use them up. Just the same way He used Shefenkas. I won’t do that, sexually. It will be more merciful this way. I told myself that, as they stood looking up at us as we waited for the Mahid to fetch the arms.


“I will leave you to your amusement, my miniature.” Father held out his hands for a slave to pull him to his feet, the chair whisked away. He actually patted my back absently as he continued on to the orrery, having given his permission for me to do anything and all that I willed to these two men.

I turned toward them. “You two will fight. Or I will give you to the Mahid, to learn upon, both of you.” Torture it was clear they understood, from their faces. They accepted the swords and chains, reluctantly and they looked at each other, agonized. Then they looked up at me in mute appeal. 

As they stood, the four young Mahid, clearly pleased at the prospect of having them to torture, spread to give the two room, and block the exits. As if they would even try to run. I waited another long moment and they did try to break, willing even to face Mahid and torture than raise a blade against each other.

The Mahid were on them like a pack of dogs before they’d taken three steps, disarmed them, struck them once each and threw them back on their faces underneath me. My face was like marble. I felt nothing. I had to make them fight. I wanted to make them fight. They were mine. Father had given them to me. What would Shefenkas think of me doing this? I shivered all over and dismissed the thought. Yes, and look what I did to him... what happened to him. He was destroyed. He's dead. It was as if I were dead.


I looked down at them as they lay on their faces, arms wrapped around their heads. They were in Hayel. I knew that. My smile felt vicious to myself. “Get up. Or you both go to the Mahid and your family will never know what happened to you.” It was a glorious sick feeling inside, my control over them. “You fight... you have a chance that your parents will get one of you back.”


They staggered back up onto their feet, holding the weapons as though they were poisonous serpents that would bite them. Father would say that they had to be forced to obedience, even in the face of damnation. People had to be made obedient to our will.


It was a fool’s dream that someone might actually want to obey, a dream of someone who believed that they were loved, that they were capable of being loved. People were stupid, venal and cruel and the only way to get what I wanted was to be more cruel than they. I had forgotten that and been reminded.


“It is allowed one spasm of disobedience, okas. Enough delay. I wish to see the two of you fight.”


They looked at each other and up at me. I waved at them and one of the Mahid, with a ten-strand whip, tipped with metal spiked stars, cracked it to encourage them. I saw the whisper between them, though I couldn’t hear what was said.

“FIGHT!” I shouted the way the trainer at the Mezem shouted and they jumped and began circling each other. They tried to spin the chains over their heads and flinched back from each other at the vicious buzz, the younger man misjudged and laid his chain around his older brother’s shoulder with a ‘crack’ that staggered him and slashed his shirt.


“First blood to the younger!” I cried. “Younger against older! Who did your parents love more? Who was allowed more? Who got more? Who was the favourite?” I hurled my words at them like darts. All I was doing was pulling sibling rivalry into the open, honestly. “Brotherly love.” I sneered at them. “Tell the truth with the swords!”


They struck at each other, less tentatively, swords ringing as they blocked full on, the younger brother having it knocked out of his hand. The older brother waited until he picked it up again.


"He’ll inherit what pittance your family can scrape together,” I called to the younger man. “You’ll get nothing.” To the older I called. “And he gets away with everything, doesn’t he? He can do no wrong because he’s the younger, while you work so hard to get what is given to him just because he asks.”

They struck harder now. I could see that, they were gaining some feel for the weapons and as hard as they fought, not to fight one another, they were pulled into it, helpless as moths spiralling into a candle. Their despair was obvious and kindled a dark, glossy feeling in my guts, as polished as a gem. Their damnation was mine, like feeding a hunger in me.


I watched as they battered and then cut each other, as much from unfamiliarity with the weapons as ill intent. The older brother had a cut across his face deep enough that his cheek and lip were laid open, blood pouring down his neck, spreading like a flower into the collar of his shirt, his chain hand hung limp, the loop dragging the injured arm down so it dragged on the marble, leaving bloody patterns on the white stone.


The younger had a gash open in his forehead and couldn’t see for blood, he slipped and fell, sliding to a stop at his brother’s feet. He lost the sword in the fall and lay on his own chain. I leaned over as he threw up his empty hand to me, like a gladiator begging for the white.


His brother begged me with his eyes, standing there. I could have relented. I could have been nice. Nice just gets taken apart, I thought bitterly. “Kellin.” I said. Mahid pricked all around him, anticipating him trying to refuse me. He looked down and whispered something, perhaps a goodbye, perhaps an okas prayer. He put the point of his sword on his brother’s chest and pushed hard.

He didn’t hit the heart perfectly, and the younger man writhed and screamed around the sword pinning him like a butterfly on the floor. Blood poured out of his mouth and I heard the older brother weeping and telling him to die already. “Please, brother. Please. Go to Selestialis. Please.”

When at last the younger brother ceased moving, the elder stood frozen for a long moment before looking up at me. He stared up and his eyes caught mine. I had to look away, the sick joy turning bitter.

I still could feel nothing. I made myself cold and black all the way through. He sank to his knees, gently pulling the sword out of his brother’s corpse and flung the weapon away, gathering the shell of a boy to his chest, beginning to moan, ‘No No.’

I felt something now. I felt the beginnings of cracking open and swallowed and swallowed and swallowed more black, plastering over any emotion that might spew out to hurt me.

 The Mahid stood at attention still, the one having re-coiled the whip, around the two brothers. I could see their disappointment, even if no one else could. The older brother cradled his younger brother in his arms and raised his face to howl his anguish in a most un-Arkan way, his eyes clenched shut. I signalled to the oldest Mahid to come up to me without calling out.

“See that the young man’s corpse is delivered to their home, with him. After that It is dismissed.” He nodded and withdrew and I stood in the shadow and watched the man cry.